Wednesday, April 01, 2015

Gross Motor Skill : Climbing Up and Down

Okay I actually did this with my cutie pie approximately 4+ months back, in late Nov 2014.
Regret that I haven been doing much of this with her recently but she does gets her twice weekly stairs climbing when we pass by her usual stairs climbing place...

Toddler's Age : Approximate 24 months old (2 years old)

Material:

A few stools/chairs of different heights.

A little toy for child to hold (optional, to increase difficulty)

Steps:

1. Arrange the stools/chairs in a row, in random order, or a "hill shape"if you like.

2. Show toddler how you would complete the whole sequence (walk on the stools) and encourage him/her to try.

3. During his/her first walk/climb, hold his/her hand, after gaining confidence he/she will not want you to hold his/her hands anymore. (You may want to do it on a mat but I find that the stools are not that stable when placed on the mat and kids being kids may feel that since there's a mat it's okay to fall and will not be that serious in completing the activity properly)

4. After playing a few rounds you can change the order of the stools to make it more interesting.

5. When he/she is confident and is able to complete the activity, you may consider adding a little game to it at the end. Eg. Kids bowling or throwing a ball. He/she will need to hold on to the ball while climbing up and down the stools, then followed by attempting to knock down the pins with the ball in his/her hand.

This is especially good for rainy days or days you don't want to bring your little one out to the playground!

Playgrounds are good for their gross motor skills as they need to climb up to get to the slides and sometimes they need to crawl through tunnel too! However the playground usually have many older kids that play really rough (kids playing catching, or even playing badminton right in front of the slides!) and sometimes it's either too hot (11-3pm) or too wet (anyone else feels that it's raining the whole year round?), or maybe you are simply afraid that your kid may come into contact with some virus from another child who is unwell? (yes coughing kids, kids with runny nose, even kids with fever cooling patch still on their forehead spotted at the playground. -.-), or maybe the mosquitoes are keeping you away (dengue)?

Alright, that's all for now, hope you enjoyed my gross/fine motor series so far. :)